1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medium processor, and specifically to a machine included in an automatic transaction apparatus or the like which treats media such as sheet-like media, e.g. bills.
2. Description of the Background Art
For example, as shown in FIG. 14, a conventional automatic transaction apparatus has a bill depositing and withdrawing machine 200 which consists of an upper housing 201 and a lower housing 202. The upper housing 201 has a bill inlet-outlet 203 for receiving and discharging bills; a discriminator 204 for determining the authenticity, denominations and the like of bills; and a temporary storage 205 for temporarily storing bills. The lower housing 202 has a bill storage 208 provided therein which includes a plurality of bill storing boxes 206 for storing bills therein denomination by denomination; and a repository 207 for storing abnormal bills such as rejected bills returned from the bill depositing and withdrawing machine 200.
The upper and lower housings 201 and 202 also have a conveyance channel 209 provided therethrough to communicate with the bill inlet-outlet 203, the discriminator 204, the temporary storage 205, the bill storing boxes 206 and the repository 207.
The conventional bill depositing and withdrawing machine 200 as above is designed specifically for use in a predetermined country, Japan in this example. For example, the bill depositing and withdrawing machine 200, thus specific to use in Japan, includes the five bill storing boxes 206 according to the Japanese denominations. The five bill storing boxes 206 are arranged in the lower housing 202 in the fore-and-aft direction as shown in FIG. 14, and can be individually detached from the lower housing 202 for maintenance. Note that in FIG. 14 the front of the depositing and withdrawing machine 200 is indicated by an arrow 230 whereas the back of the machine 200 is by an arrow 232.
However, the bill depositing and withdrawing machine 200 of the Japanese specifications has a problem that it cannot be used in countries other than Japan because some countries may have more denominations than Japan and hence the five bill storing boxes 206 are not satisfactory.
For this problem, U.S. Pat. No. 7,976,005 B2 to ICHIKAWA et al, for example, proposes a bill storing box 306 as shown in FIG. 15. The bill storing box 306 has two repositories 307 and 308 arranged in its upper and lower portions, respectively, and thus can store two denominations of bills while being sorted thereinside.
The bill storing box 306 having two repositories 307 and 308 reduces the storage capacity of bills of respective denominations but can increase the number of denominations, for example, from five to ten without changing the size of the lower housing 202, whereby the bill depositing and withdrawing machine with the bill storing box 306 can handle various kinds of bills of various countries at low costs.
However, due to the two repositories 307 and 308 being included in one bill storing box 306, the box 306 has a trouble that, when one repository 307 or 308 becomes full of bills and requires maintenance, there is a necessity to detach the entire bill storing box 306 from the bill depositing and withdrawing machine for maintenance. The bill storing box 306 having two repositories thus enables the bill depositing and withdrawing machine to handle more denominations, but requires more maintenance.